fine whine

I was thinking about coins today. Walking to Meijer I stumbled across one that has no markings save for a picture on each side. There is nothing to indicate denomination or value, nor really to indicate if it is money at all. It's a near-blank. Even Chuck-E-Cheese puts their name on their tokens, but this thing has no indication of place of origin, either--just a couple pictures.

It got me thinking about money systems and coins. Are all of the markings really necessary? I tried to create a system of coinage that didn't need any markings at all, yet was still obvious as to value. Without identifying marks a coin would need some sort of unique shape or sizing to provide a standard for comparative value, and I didn't really want to mess with sizes. That's how we got into the whole penny is bigger than a dime but smaller than a nickel debacle still wreaking havoc in the American economy, after all.

No, in my system I thought of using points or vertices. Geometric shapes such as triangles, squares, pentagons and so forth were pretty obvious but not so useful, as what sort of system would start with three (or rather would want to divorce number of sides from value so readily)? I then imagined a bunch of mostly-round coins with a varying number of bulges to indicate value. An egg-shaped one would be worth one. An ellipse, two, and so on and so forth.

There are two problems with simplifying coins, though. First, the economics of minting money out of commonly available materials means that either the money could be melted down for its raw ore worth more or that anybody with access to cheap materials and simple machinery could make their own coinage. I didn't have a long enough walk home to spend too much time pondering such issues as have plagued the U.S. Mint for centuries. The second problem with my money would be that they'd be nearly useless in conventional vending machines. With only half a block to mull this over, I realized that vending machines were created to work with the coins, not the other way around, and with my system the same would happen. Problem solved.